Mansfield Museum receives Arts Fund to support young people in the town

In a finance meeting on Tuesday, September 2, Mansfield District Council accepted a £65,000 Art Fund grant to help with a developing arts project for small children.

Art Fund is a UK charity which helps museums to build their collections, keep them accessible to the public and offer funding to help various organisations improve their accessibility.

The charity has teamed up with Nesta, another charity dealing in innovation, to create the Early Years Innovation in Museums programme.

Papers reveal this will involve an eight-week programme aimed at providing educational and unique arts activities for low-income families with children aged two to four-years-old.

The project aims to improve museums’ facilitation in supporting child development, increase parent-child interactions among low-income families and improve access to museums for families.

The grant funding to Mansfield Museum will be used to support this programme, which will run from June 2024 to March 2026.

The report, which will discussed in the meeting next week, says: “The funding will enable Mansfield Museum to enhance accessibility to art and culture, promote education within this field and support vulnerable families.”

Coun Craig Whitby (Lab), Deputy Mayor of the council and cabinet member for corporate and finance, told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: “It’s wonderful our cultural service team are continuously looking for funding for disadvantaged families, to help with access to arts and culture.”

The funding will be dispersed across the initial design and testing of the programme, its implementation across partner museums and upon its completion.